At the time, it was the world's worst terrorist attack. In a three-hour period on March 12, 1993, 13 bombs exploded in Bombay killing more than 260 people and left more than 700 others injured. It was the nadir of a long period of turmoil - the early 1990s were a violent time in India; riots, armed revolution inspired by religion and blasts filled the papers. The air was thick with cynicism and hate.

Despite the drama, the Bombay movie industry was silent about the 1993 blast. No big names came forward to condemn the bombings, there were no star-studded benefit galas for the victims, no movies attempted to examine the trauma. Many believed that the city's gangsters, who were said to have been involved in the bombings and had the final say on many of Bollywood's sets, had cowed the film makers.

That was until last year, when Anurag Kashyap, an already controversial figure in Hindi cinema, completed Black Friday. Costing 80m rupees (£1m) and shot in the United Arab Emirates and India, Black Friday was finished in 68 days. The 33-year-old says the problem was not threats from the underworld but Hindi cinema's lack of ambition.

"I did not get one phone call from a gangster," says Anurag. "The problem was that film-making in India had not until recently managed to grasp the drama-documentary form. They had not thought beyond the clichés of Bollywood.

"I wanted the challenge. 1993 was India pre-globalisation. It was pre-mobile phones. It was pre-satellite television. Today Bombay is called Mumbai. How to use real places and people and not get today's India in every shot was a challenge. But we did it."

Based on a book with the same name, Black Friday is a sprawling, uneven movie much like the two other recent attempts by Hindi cinema to examine recent history: Amu, about the 1984 Sikh riots, and Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (A Thousand Wishes Like That), which portrays a generation of idealistic, left-wing Indian students who took up the grenade and gun in the 1970s.

Although Black Friday arrives at this week's Bite The Mango film festival in Bradford, it has yet to be seen in India. With official jurisdiction on the atrocities still creeping through the courts, Black Friday's attempts to reconstruct events and ascribe guilt and motive went down very badly with the authorities.

India's high court saw the film as an unwelcome distraction from the pursuit of justice. The result was that just two hours before the film's premiere was to begin, a blocking order arrived from the bench. "That was it as far as India was concerned. We got the court order and had to empty the cinema."

The court in question, specially built in Bombay's central jail for the trial of 195 people charged in the bomb blasts, began hearings in 1995. There is no jury, simply a judge who finished taking evidence in 2003. A verdict is not expected for another year.

Despite the long-running legal case, the ban surprised many as the film was merely an adaptation of a widely-read book. "The film is in Hindi. The book is in English. The concern is that the masses will watch Black Friday but they will not read a book. We will fight the courts and get the film released. It is important for film makers to be able to talk about recent events not just films about the British in India."

Given the turmoil in the Muslim world, Black Friday is important in that it gives the background to a sectarian conflict that is rarely considered by the west.

The depicts the humiliation of an Indian Muslim community who watched helpless in December 1992 as the 16th-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya was torn down by Hindu fanatics, convinced it was built on the birthplace of a warrior-god Ram. In January 1993, Bombay Muslims then faced an organised riot provoked by extremist Hindus.

The violence embittered Bombay's Muslims, including the dons who ran Bombay's underworld. The film shows Indian Muslims' loyalties slowly being divided between Hindu-majority India and the Islamic world. Black Friday's version of events is that the bomb blasts had their origins in an angry Indian Muslim community whose rage was exploited by the country's neighbour and rival Pakistan.

In the film, Pakistan's military intelligence wing helped to plan the bomb explosions, recruited underworld figures to plant the explosives and arranged to smuggle in the necessary weapons. The Bombay authorities, too, are depicted with blood on their hands - there are scenes of police torturing Muslim suspects.

"I wanted to give both sides of the story. India is still a very feudal place and people are easily influenced especially by religion. Whether it's Hindu leaders or Muslim clerics, everybody gets used. It's how it is over here."

A screenwriter and director, Anurag's first two films, Paanch and Black Friday, broke with the conventions of Bollywood to embrace grubby realism. Instead of preening stars, flashy dance sequences, thin scripts and casts of thousands Kashyap opted for unknown actors, small sets and fantasy-less scripts.

Both films were a revolt against the syrupy romanticism of India's mainstream movies, eschewing escapism for real-life conflict .

Four years ago censors banned Paanch, a movie about a foul-mouthed rock band who take drugs, have sex and whose internecine violence eventually spirals into the killing of a policeman. The violence was unprovoked and, unlike in Hollywood flicks with similar anarchic themes, portrayed in Hindi.

"They said Paanch contained uncalled-for violence. They did not want to understand that violence could be impulsive. They wanted reasons when there were none. So it was banned. But I am hopeful that will be shown sometime soon."

Having come to Bombay a decade ago, Kashyap's own seems closer to a Bollywood script than his own tough-minded cinema. The zoology graduate slept on street corners and waited on tables while trying to make it in the film industry.

After writing a critically acclaimed play, his first big break came when he wrote Satya (Truth), aged 26. The movie, which focused on the life of a Mumbai gang, was widely praised for its authentic street-patois - a language far removed from the stylised "Hinglish" of contemporary Bollywood.

"I wanted to write something that was about the India I saw. I was into Akira Kurosawa, Mike Leigh, Quentin Tarantino. Sight and Sound was part of my life. Bollywood was not. I just did not get it and still don't."

But Anurag still writes for commercial Bollywood, blending American lifestyles with Indian values. "I am working on two films that are completely based on some Hollywood stories. I just do it for the money, to be honest."

· Black Friday screens on September 23 at the Pictureville cinema, Bradford opening the Bite the Mango film festival (tel:0870 7010 200)